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Fighting Spam Is An Impossible Job
Which is why you probably know the term "False Positive", which occurs when the spam filters reject your good email by mistake. It's
frustrating when your legitimate incoming email doesn't get to you, and it's equally frustrating when your legitimate mailing list message does not reach your subscribers.
We call these "Bogus Bounces", because the bounce message your
subscriber's ISP sends back should not apply to double opt-in subscribers. And not only does your message
not get through, most Email Service Providers will then remove the email
address from your list. Causing your list of subscribers to shrink unnecessarily.
If you've ever looked at the error logs when email to your subscribers is rejected, you will see error messages like these.
- 550 Blocked by policy: mail contains spam
- 550 Rejected: Appears to be SPAM
- 554 The message matches a profile the Internet community may consider spam
- 554 The message was rejected because it contains prohibited virus or spam content
These Are Examples Of An "Honest Mistake" By Your Subscriber's ISP
They are doing their best to shield their paying customer from the 95% of incoming email that really is spam. The tools they have to work with are immature and incomplete, and the war zone is always changing because the spammers are always changing their tactics.
Our Bounce Re-Delivery System Monitors These Error Logs
Looking for more than 400 different "Bogus Bounce" messages, that indicates the ISP made an honest mistake. And when it finds your good email being rejected, it does the following.
- Sends out a second email message to your subscriber
- From a different IP Address
- With a different From Address
- That does not contain your email message, but rather a link to a web page on our system that contains your email message
This second message usually gets through, and now your subscriber can read your message. In addition, we have sent them the exact error message from the initial email rejection. So they can follow up with their ISP to prevent future problems.
As you might imagine, the subscribers are pleased that anybody would go to all this trouble to deliver their email. And some of them even reply back to let us know.
We Also Send A Message To The ISP
Giving them friendly heads up that their spam blocking system needs some adjustment. Because their paying customer is also a double opt-in subscriber to your mailing list. We ask the ISP to whitelist our IP Addresses. Or take whatever steps are necessary to keep this problem from happening in the future. And some of the ISP's reply back to let us know they have taken care of the problem.
And We Send A Summary Report To The List Owner
Showing them any and all subscribers that were blocked with "Bogus Bounce" error messages. So that they can follow up via private email if they want, or adjust future messages to prevent these sorts of problems.
Sometimes the email message is blocked because the ISP is using a third party resource to determine the spammyness of a message. In these cases it's better to work with the third party to resolve the problem, and we send a special message to the list owner.
Our Exclusive Bounce Re-Delivery System
Gets your email message to all of your subscribers, and keeps these subscribers on your list, instead of being removed for "Bogus Bounces".
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